“Asking Stanford” is a series of small stories from Stanford students, each of which comes together to highlight the diversity of experiences and perspectives on campus.

Parental love

Before I was born, my parents made me an email account, to ensure that my username wouldn’t be taken before my arrival. A few years ago, I found old emails in my inbox, from September 2004 – my birthday is in October. They were my mom, writing from my point of view, to my dad. One of them reads,

“Dear dada, 

We are doing fine, we are doing laundry now, and pretty soon mommy and I will go shopping…I am anxious to come out, then I can see and interact with you.

I love you, 

baby ye”

I think about the excitement of first time parenting, the love I had prior to even landing in the world, captured by my mom as she practiced her English for an audience of one. I feel grateful to have the record of that love, to remind me of what existed before and will continue beyond me. – Erin Ye

Love lessons

We never got to the point of saying “I love you” to one another. But it felt like the closest that two people could ever get without uttering those words. On the night that we met for the first time, we were having a uniquely deep conversation. We were in my room, and I ended up coming out as bisexual to her. She, as the first person to whom I ever revealed that side of myself, was there for me. Like no other time in my life with someone in that way, I felt seen.

Now, that story is but a distant memory in all of my stories that fall under the umbrella of love. Nevertheless, it stands out because of what it taught me about love. An important part of love is being scared to do something, yet you find yourself doing it because you found that person. She was that person for me back then, and I will forever be grateful for our paths crossing. For what ‘love’ looked like at the time, I felt understood. It was that understanding that made it easier to start to unpack that new side of me: my bisexuality. – Sebastian Strawser

The unnamed feeling

Something about summer night skies and crickets and traipsing to the store and muffled giggles. 

Something about rooms full of content souls and passing around chunks of fruit to share and open half-devoured bags of chips. A lull, a quiet, a beat. Looking over a heap of faces smiling silly and feeling. All the love a person can hold. – Allie Skalnik

Love letters

I keep a manila envelope of every nice thing anyone has ever written to me. Everything. From the Valentine’s day post-it notes that we shared in Academic Decathlon to the stick figure drawing of me one of my teammates drew during Mock Trial. In the four years that I started collecting them, my folder grew heavier than a pair of my shoes. I never look at the letters. I don’t even remember what they say, only who they are from and when. I only open the envelope to put new notes in. Sometimes, when I feel hurt or uncertain, I hold the envelope and shake it. It sounds like a rainstick, one born of the sum of little letters of love.

Throughout these four years, where I make my friendships has changed. Sometimes the seasons changed with an explosive falling out. Sometimes they simply acquiesced into mutual silence. After a nasty friend fight during my senior year, I opened the envelope to take letters out. My (best?) friend had chosen her ex-boyfriend over our friend group; I felt livid and vindictive. I wanted to erase all the people I’d stopped loving from my manila heart. I gritted my teeth and poured the envelope onto the floor. I combed through every letter to find each one that I felt disgust towards. 

After twenty minutes, I had all of them in my hands. I did it! I separated everyone into good and bad. I tossed all the bad letters into the dustbin and slept. They mean nothing anymore, right?

I couldn’t sleep. They mean nothing anymore, right? I tossed and turned in a heavy gray blanket. They mean nothing, right?

Love is joy. When you befriend someone, when you grow closer to them, love is the joy in all your little moments together. Then love is eloquence. You understand another person. You know what makes them unique in your eyes, and you become a Shakespeare with all the words to immortalize them. Then love is frustration. You wish they could see what you see in them, and maybe they would choose something else. Then love is bargaining. You cannot be friends with another person because of what happened; but if only they were different! Then love is lost: It means nothing that you were once someone’s best friend and they felt enough joy and eloquence towards you to put it in writing, right?

I pushed myself out of bed and knelt before the trash can. I un-crumpled every note, I un-separated them from the “good” letters, and I un-divided my manila heart. Then I shook my manila heart rainstick, for good measure, and slept to the rattle of my full paper soul. – Jenny Ballutay